Tag: Ganon

Last night, I beat Breath of the Wild. I didn’t think about snagging a screenshot when the screen went white and the simple text “Destroy Ganon: Complete” came up. I wish I did. My wife was there for that final battle, and can vouch for me; otherwise I’d hardly believe it myself.

And that ends a truly great game. It got me so wholeheartedly devoted to an open-world fantasy RPG at a time in my life when I didn’t think I had the time, attention, or persistence to play a game like that anymore. I never stopped having fun with it. It was beautiful and surprising throughout.

Late in the game, while mopping up some shrines to round out my spirit orbs, quest log empty except for that one dread Main Quest to Destroy Ganon, I climbed a tall rock spire simply because it was there and I hadn’t been to the top before. Awaiting me was a Luminous Stone Talus, perhaps the only one of its kind across all Hyrule. We fought. It was surprising and rewarded adventure, and it was fun. The whole game is like that. It just never really stops.

I didn’t 100% the game. I got all the memories, and the Master Sword. I cleared out all quests in my log, including main and side and shrine quests. I talked to everyone I could think of. I probably missed some people. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t find all the shrines, though I don’t know how many spirit orbs I’d found by the end of the game. I definitely didn’t find all the Korok seeds, and I had seeds left over and inventory expansions left unfilled by the end of the game. But I did everything I wanted to do in the game. My final play time recorded in Switch is “120 hours or more.” It was just an incredible experience all the way through.

Whether you’ve followed along with my past posts, or this is the first you’ve read, I would say to you, please, please, please consider playing Breath of the Wild, if you haven’t already. It doesn’t matter whether or not you care for the Zelda franchise. I’ve never been a fan. I’ve never played another Zelda game to completion, even. And I loved this title. My wife, who is a Zelda fan, loved this game too (although so far she’s mostly just watched me play it; she didn’t advance very far herself, though she actually has completed Zelda games in the past).

I don’t think I’ll touch the game again for a while. Maybe months, or years. Maybe I’ll never play it again. But maybe someday I’ll get an itch for adventure, and I’ll pull it out like I pull Morrowind or Fable out, and I’ll play through it again–and maybe, if I’m feeling especially adventurous, I’ll even download the DLC to give that extra-hard Master mode a try.

If anything, the game left me wanting more. When Zelda goes off with Link to investigate a suddenly silent Divine Beast Vah Ruta (and to help give closure to the Zora King), hoping that they will be able to restore Hyrule, I hoped, even knowing otherwise, that the game would let us do that. I would love to have seen an end-game world post-main quest, where there is more room to explore, where we have new quests focused more on building and growing, interacting with the characters. You may say that Zelda isn’t that kind of game, but the whole Tarrey Town quest line is about building a community in the wilderness from nothing. Being able to fight back against the scattered remnants of Ganon’s army, and building a society in its place, would have been a remarkable experience.

Not that the Zelda franchise is ever that concerned with canon or consistency between titles, but the implication at the end was that we destroyed Ganon’s base form, and not just his attempt to reincarnate yet again. Maybe that’s a gimmick used in other games as well? But I want to take this as a break in the chain. Zelda remarks that her own powers seem to have faded once again–and she’s at peace with that now. Imagine if the whole cycle was broken. Imagine if the next Zelda game was in this bold new frontier, as society is allowed to recover. What a wildly different game that would be. If it ever existed, I expect I’d love it as least as much as I’ve loved Breath of the Wild.